Warner Brothers Working On BLUE BEETLE Film

I have always said that Warner Brothers should go beyond just Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman (and, of late, Joker and Harley Quinn) in looking for DC Comics properties to adapt. It looks like they are finally taking that advice.

The Wrap states that the studio is developing a Blue Beetle film. The film will focus on the third incarnation of that hero, Latino teen Jaime Reyes, who gains a powerful battle suit when an alien scarab bonds to his body. Mexican-born Gareth Dunnet-Alcocer, writer on the Scarface and Miss Bala remakes, will be handling the screenplay. Zev Forman will be executive producing.

Blue Beetle is one of the oldest characters that DC Comics owns, but DC didn’t always own the character. The character was original a creatiom of DC Comics’ rival Fox Comics, and first appeared in the August 1939 issue of Fox’s Mystery Men Comics #1. The original Blue Beetle was a police officer named Dan Garrett who fought crime using a bulletproof costume and a special vitamin that gave him superhuman strength and stamina (the vitamin was later replaced by a mystic scarab). At the height of his popularity, the character was also spun off into a newspaper comic strip and a radio drama.

As superheroes fell out of favor, Blue Beetle was bounced from publisher to publisher. going from Fox to Holyoke Publishing back to Fox before settling at Charlton Comics in the late-1950s. It was at Charlton that the concept was revamped. Blue Beetle was now Ted Kord, a gifted athlete and brilliant inventor who fought crime with gadgets and weapons instead of super powers.

DC Comics bought out the Charlton characters in 1983 and brought them into the DC Universe not long after. The Blue Beetles were the inspiration for the Nite Owl characters in Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ Watchmen.

The Jaime Reyes version made his debut in the 2005 crossover Infinite Crisis and soon starred in his own book. This version of the character also appeared in other DC Comics media, including a number of their animated films and in the Batman: The Brave and the Bold and Young Justice cartoons. He has also appeared in a number of DC video games, most notably Injustice 2.

Personally, I am a fan of all incarnations of Blue Beetle, including the Jaime Reyes version. He was a decent and honest hero at a time when comics in general and DC in particular were dark and grim. He has an interesting and diverse supporting cast and could make a wonderful film if they get the character right.

William is cursed with the shared love of comic books and of films. Luckily, this is a great time for him to be alive. His writing has been featured on Broken Frontier.com, PopMatters.com and in Comics Foundry magazine.